Lost luminaries
The couple that worked for peace and lived in poetry is no more among us — their work remains, to guide us towards a brighter path
A double loss! First, Riyaz Punjabi and then, his wife Tarannum Riyaz, exited this world within a span of a month and a half. I had spoken to both of them shortly before they passed away. Tarannum had broken down on the phone fearing for Riyaz Sahib, who lost his battle against assorted ailments. Heartbroken Tarannum followed him, falling to Coronavirus.
Both personalities were towering within their own rights. Riyaz Sahib was former Vice-Chancellor of Kashmir University and India's doughty watchman on Kashmir debates in Geneva. The Padma Shri-awardee was the founder-editor of the quarterly 'Journal of Peace Studies'. Tarannum, a poet, a fiction writer and a former newscaster on All India Radio, used to radiate a polite charm of her own. She was honoured with the SAARC Literature Award in 2014. She frequently appeared at Nashists or soirées held by noted impresario KK Kohli in whose words she was 'a gentle soul' and 'a sensitive poet whose heart bled for all women but it had deep scars of atrocities in Kashmir.'
I first met Riyaz Punjabi, in fact, a Kashmiri, at the Press Club of India in Delhi. Over a drink, I mentioned to him about one of my book projects which had been under hibernation for well over 10 years. Riyaz Sahib showed some encouraging interest when he heard of my book's projected title — 'India and Britannia: An Abiding affair'. When I told him that I was looking for a publisher but I had no money to offer the sum demanded by many Indian publishers who were no more than printers.
Riyaz Sahib said: "Not to worry". He introduced me to a London-based publisher who had just set up a shop in Delhi. The contact with both Riyaz Sahib and the publisher Ajit Singh prospered, indeed flowered into friendship.
About a year after that Press Club meeting with Riyaz Sahib, 'India and Britannia: an abiding affair' indeed came to be published and was duly launched at India International Centre, Delhi. Sir Mark Tully, a well-loved India-based British broadcaster launched the book in the presence of a galaxy of speakers.
Riyaz Sahib was one among the speakers who felt pleasantly surprised to find from my book that as many as four British nationals had become president of the Indian National Congress. In fact, there were five, including Annie Besant, the theosophist who was pejoratively referred to by the Empire loyalists as 'Irish Brahminee' because of her Irish extraction, even though she was a British national.
Riyaz Sahib used to wear his world affairs knowledge lightly as a former Vice-Chancellor of the Kashmir University. He had laid the foundation of the media department of the university where I saw his name plaque engraved at the entrance on a visit to Srinagar some six years ago.
Riyaz Sahib was the founder and editor of the Journal of Peace Studies, the quarterly which he edited for nearly a decade and a half. He was ably supported by his Assistant Editor Jawahir Raina for the last 12 years.
Peace in South Asia was the journal's abiding concern, with a particular search for India-Pakistan rapprochement. Though focused on Kashmir, the journal covered a wide range of affairs, from terrorism in South Asia to the condition of Uyghurs in China and the conflict surrounding the assimilation and integration of Han Chinese and Uyghur population in the region.
Nearer home, writing in a 2018 issue of the Journal, Riyaz Sahib brought out the touching impact on ordinary lives. He cited the case of an Indian national, Hamid Nehal Ansari, who had spent six years in Pakistani jails after entering Pakistan without required documents to meet a woman he had befriended on social media. He paid such a huge price for his love call "oblivious of the fact that boundary lines drawn in the blood are impervious to tender feelings of love and affection."
Recounting another case in the same issue, Riyaz Sahib wrote the heart-rending story of "a man from Pakistan who fell in love with an Indian woman and came on valid official documents to India and married her, but overstayed and had to undergo ten years of imprisonment before being deported to Pakistan." Riyaz Sahib narrates the tales of countless fishermen who spend years in jails for straying across the watery borders led by the fishes that carry no passport tags and are galore!
In the long-running Indo-Pak dialogue of the opposites in diplomatic parlance, the search for India-Pakistan peace may look elusive but is still achievable.
Views expressed are personal